Working with a Blog to Generate Income

I just had a comment here asking about how to bring in some income from a blog. As with many people already blogging, they often do not see the obvious opportunity to make money. Blogs are not the get rich quick answer, but are interestingly enough a great foundation in which to build a profitable business.

I started a blog called blogmarketingexperts.com in the summer of 2008 and did not think anything about it. It was originally supposed to be a blog to help offline businesses to get online customers to their “brick and mortar” location.  It was an enjoyable “hobbie.” I didn’t start seriously with this blog until January of 2009. I started posting at least twice a week and slowly started building a following. Funny thing, I did not mean to start people emailing me and calling, but I felt that, if I continued to “blog” that I would have enough people on my list to sell products to.  Currently, I am on the way to generate over 1,500 unique visitors a month. If promoted properly, I could easily bring in revenue by selling banner ads on my front page. Figure, at least one dollar per unique visitor, and you can see that I could charge a base of $1,500 per month. I am waiting until I get more unique views, say over 2,500 before I can feel comfortable to gaurantee that 1,500 minimum just to “over deliver” to the advertiser.

Other ways to make money with a blog is to build the following with an opt in box, preferably in the upper right corner of your blog to capture names and email addresses of potential customers. The most common way to entice people to “opt in” is to offer a free digitally downloaded report on the topic of your blog. For instance, if your blog is about food, make a free report about how to prepare and cook simple, but delicious meals for people on  the “go.” Find a creative twist of the report and that would have widespread interest. If you are patient with promoting you blog to your friends and family and continue to write good blog posts that interests your visitors, you will have success with building your list. From that, you can send emails to your list on a regular or semi-regular basis to sell your own products or services or represent other products as an affiliate.

Just remember, if any of you have a blog out there, as a hobbie, or the casual business related blog, continue to post and make that effort to build customers. Work on your blog and it will work for you. If you are a workaholic, then work on your blog like a madman/madwoman!

Peace and Love,

Bruce